1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic bankbook and a business system for use therewith.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, banking organs such as banks have been conspicuously advanced in the use of electronics and mechanization, while various mechanized systems, which will be called electronic banking in the near future, have been investigated.
Among such organizational reforms, a deposit and savings passbook has been considered for use as an electronic bankbook by the use of an IC card. Provided that this is put into operation, more versatile applications of the bankbook can be anticipated without losing the use of a conventional bankbook in a booklet form.
A prior booklet type bankbook is limited in the quality of the paper and the number of sheets thereof, etc., due to structural restraint of the apparatus used for recording the transactions therein. Many requirements from banking organs for a low-cost bankbook with an increased number of sheets have not been satisfied at present.
In a booklet type bankbook, the lack of a large number of sheets brings about insufficient capacity to house data therein. In particular, when a plurality of transaction items are put together in one bankbook, the insufficiency of data housing capability becomes more and more conspicuous. This brings about an increase of the issued number of new bankbooks, and prevents costs from being reduced. In this connection, a booklet type bankbook now in use can store 4 to 8 kilobytes of data (printout). In addition, since a bankbook employed in banking organs records transactions results, it is also important to directly read out the contents of the bankbook.
By contrast, an IC card comprises an IC chip having a CPU and data memories, etc., a display, key switches, and a battery, etc., mounted on an insulated card substrate. The IC card can store business data, etc., in data memories, while it can display the data on a display by reading out it from the memories by a key operation. Accordingly, it can sufficiently serve as a deposit and savings passbook.
Moreover, with the rapid progress of semiconductor technology in recent years, a 256 kilobyte CMOS RAM is available as a data memory, and also a large capacity data memory can be packaged in an IC card. Accordingly, the data storage capacity of an IC card has been improved by a large margin as compared with that of a booklet type bankbook, and one sheet of the IC card can correspond to several booklet bankbooks in storing transaction data.
Hereupon, in financial organs such as banks, in order to improve services for customers, expand transactions, and investigate the financial status of customers, attribute data of the customers are stored in a customer data file. The customer data includes, besides a bank number, an account number, and a load limit, a tax-free small-sum savings limit, his address, the age of the customer, a telephone number, a family makeup, and data concerning privacy, etc. Consequently, since a large amount of data is involved, the data storage capacity of a file system in a data processing center of a banking organ must be enormous.
Since a banking organ carries on not only transaction data, but attribute data of customers in such a way, a memory system is increasingly required to have a high speed and large-size for processing such data.
Thereupon, with use of the electronic bankbook as a deposit and savings bankpass, a load of a memory file system can be reduced by storing attribute data of a customer because of its large data storage capability.
Such an IC card has an identification code therein, which serves as a credit code between a bank and a customer like a key function of a prior magnetic card. Namely, an IC card is inserted into a machine such as an automatic cash dispenser, and a proper identification code which is previously imparted to a possessor of the IC card is entered into the automatic cash dispenser by operation of a keyboard. The cash dispenser checks the correspondence between the entered identification code and a data from the IC card, and only when the correspondence is as previously specified, is the machine operated.
As described above in detail, an identification code of an IC card serves as an important key function for checking that a person with the card is the person in question. In addition, for the identification code, a four-figure secret number have been frequently used up to now due to the limited memory capacity of the card possessor. This has been widely used in, besides banks, stores, automatic cash dispensers and identification cards, and established at present.
However, such a prior IC card has a drawback in that the number of characters which can be displayed on a display of the IC card is limited to from 32 to 64 because of its limited size, i.e., only characters corresponding to one transaction can be displayed at best, as compared with a case of a paper bankbook in which one page's transaction data can be exhibited at a time. Therefore, for an electronic bankbook using an IC card, a problem remains to be solved in that characters on a display must be seen with ease.
In addition, attribute data of a customer is treated as a confidential matter on the banking organ side, and is not available to the customer, in principle. Accordingly, attribute data of a customer cannot be stored in a data memory which stores transaction data therein. As a result, a problem is produced in that the attribute data must be processed in a data processing center of a banking organ.
Moreover, the data memory, although having a mass storage, is limited in its data storage capability. Accordingly, when data is written into the memory up to its limit, the electronic bankbook must be renewed or new data must be written into the data memory from the beginning of addresses thereof. In detail, in the former case wherein an electronic bankbook must be renewed every time data is written up to a limit of the data memory, it costs a great deal since an electronic bankbook is expensive, and takes a certain time for its issue. In the latter case, transaction data already written in the data memory is erased by writing new data therein. This causes a problem from a viewpoint of reliability.
In addition, in an IC card employed with an identification code such as a four-figure secret number, it is not discriminated whether the identification code is erroneously set due to a poor memory of a holder of the card or is a mistaken identification code set by a dishonest user, for example. Particularly, there is a severe problem if the identification code is set many times using an IC card acquired by a dishonest user, until the user finally reaches the prescribed identification code, and a key is released so as to lead to the improper use of the IC card.